European stock markets traded largely higher Tuesday, helped by a batch of largely positive corporate earnings from a number of corporate giants.
At 3:30 AM ET (0730 GMT), the DAX in Germany traded largely flat, the U.K.’s FTSE 100 climbed 0.3% and the CAC 40 in France rose 0.8%.
The corporate earnings season remained in full flow in Europe Tuesday, with the banking sector leading the way.
Societe Generale stock climbed 3% as the French lender, the country’s third largest, raised its forecast for the full year after it swung back to profit in the second quarter. The results were helped by a rebound in its French retail banking business.
Standard Chartered stock rose 0.4% after the U.K.-based bank posted a better-than-expected 57% jump in its first-half pretax profit while also announcing a $250 million share buyback and resuming interim dividend payments.
Elsewhere, BP stock climbed 3.3% after the U.K. oil major followed its main rivals by increasing its dividend and boosting its share buybacks after higher crude prices allowed it to return to profit too.
Stellantis stock rose 4.1% after the carmaker raised its full-year operating profit target after strong first-half results, while Sanofi stock rose 0.3% after the French drugmaker confirmed it had made a $3.2 billion offer to buy U.S. biotech company Translate Bio to strengthen its capability in messenger RNA, the technology underlying the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccines.
The FTSE MIB climbed up by 0.22% to 25,404.82. In the cash markets, the DAX Germany was trading up 0.07% to 15,579.17. CAC 40 in France rose by 0.79% to 6,727.60 while the FTSE 100 in the U.K. were up by 0.32% to 7,104.35. ,at the time of writing.
